have passed, but yet stalwart of body and handsome of feature, with hair and beard like silver. He is dressed in the rough cord suit and slouch hat of the ordinary frontier farmer, and in his hand he carries a whip of plaited raw-hide. His clothes have a timeworn appearance, and his hands are large and hard-looking; but, in spite of the roughness of his aspect and attire, you need only look once into Walter Brathwaite’s face to know that you were confronting a man of gentle blood.

“Good evening,” he says, heartily, advancing with outstretched hand towards the stranger. But a curious smile upon the tatter’s face causes him to pause with a half mystified, hesitating air, as if it were not unfamiliar to him. “Why, no. It can’t be. Bless my soul, it is, though. Why, Claverton, how are you, my boy? Glad to see you back again in Africa,” and he enclosed the younger man’s hand in a strong grip. “But come in; the wife’ll be delighted. Here, Jacob,” he shouted, in stentorian tones which brought a young Hottentot upon the scene in a twinkling, “take the Baas’s horse and off-saddle him.”

Passing through a hall, garnished with trophies of the chase, bushbuck horns, and tusks of the wild pig, and a couple of grinning panther-heads, they entered the dining-room, a large, homelike apartment, plainly but comfortably furnished.

“Here, Mary, I’ve brought you a visitor,” said the settler, as they entered. “You remember Arthur Claverton?”

A tall old lady, whose kindly and still handsome face bore unmistakable signs of former beauty, rose from a sewing-machine at which she had been working, with a start of surprise.

“What! Arthur? Why, so it is. But I should never have known you, you’re so altered. Ah, I always said we should see you out here again,” she continued, shaking his hand cordially.

The stranger smiled, and a very pleasant smile it was.

“Well, yes, so you did, Mrs Brathwaite; but at least I have the faculty of knowing when and where I am well off,” he said, really touched by the genuine warmth of his reception.

“So you’ve been all over the world since we saw you last—to Australia and back?” she went on. “And then the last thing we heard of you was that you had gone to America.”

“I attempted to; but Providence, or rather the blunder-headed lookout on board a homeward-bound liner, willed otherwise.”

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